


And we will come back home again

by Waistcoat35



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Aftermath, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Newt is determined to help this man, Newt wants to give him ALL the hugs, Original Percival Graves Needs a Hug, Trauma, Trust Issues, Whether Graves wants it or not HE WILL LEARN TO LIKE IT
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 08:02:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13119528
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Waistcoat35/pseuds/Waistcoat35
Summary: Percival Graves is in reality very much how Newt sees him - he is injured and wild and scarred. But perhaps this is meant to be, as Newt is good at dealing with broken things. Wild things. Lost things.





	And we will come back home again

**Author's Note:**

  * For [chameleonchanging](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chameleonchanging/gifts).



> This is for @chameleonchanging - I hope your holidays are wonderful and that you enjoy this fic. I'm sorry it was a couple of hours late.

The first time they meet, it isn’t Percival that greets him. It’s a chameleon blended into a skin of scorpion stickpins and cologne. Newt’s inner creature recoils at the obvious display of dominance, the smiles and handshakes that make his skin prickle sickeningly.

(Later, before he has them taken for execution, the mask slips – just a moment, just a second. He talks of warfare and child weapons, and when he does so a manic, childlike glee seems to light up his eyes unnaturally. It isn’t animalistic – it’s the bright glare of insanity that is quite markedly human. Newt notices often that no creature he has met has ever shown such a thing – and that he is thankful for.)

* * *

 

The second time, they don’t explicitly _meet_. Graves is the battered face on the newspaper, the flashing medal for bravery, the sour-sweet smell of too many flowers clustering up a hospital room. He is Tina’s tears of relief, the whispered gossip of wizards on street corners, the bitten lip of Madame Picquery as she looks over the medical papers.

* * *

 

The third and fourth times are very close together and yet astonishingly different. The former is a mere whisper, a suggestion of a man, making his slow way down a corridor – a single crutch supporting one side while an auror fusses quietly as she trails after him. (And isn’t it both sad and sweet that even like this, even after all that’s been done to him and all that she’s lost, Graves’ aurors will still shadow him as loyally as a dog that’s been kicked away.) The latter is a less fleeting but still brief experience; two men turning a corner at the same time, two pairs of calloused hands helping one another up, eyes that are wide and startled.

(These eyes aren’t the same, Newt thinks, somewhere buried in his subconscious. There is no spark of madness, no terrifying gleam of savagery. He’s just scared, this is only walls and fear. A kicked dog.

He looks at Graves again, takes in the pride that slowly rebuilds itself and the stiff way that aching limbs are held.

There is a fine line, he decides, between a kicked dog and a wounded wolf. Graves has slunk across it.)

* * *

 

The fifth time is more deliberate. This time Fontaine asks him to take Graves a coffee, and Queenie takes a little too long to offer to do it for him ( _suspiciously long_ , his mind supplies, but he sees her watching him and hastily quells the thought.) As the auror hands him the cup before going to her briefing, he contemplates what made him agree so quickly.

He arrives at the office, and this time Graves is more than a glimpse of a cane or the clutch of a hand. He is a lamp-lit silhouette, arched shoulders that shouldn’t be slumped and tousled hair that would normally be slicked. A limp flag tired of flying.

He stares off into space, and as Newt puts his coffee down he jolts and turns, elbow catching it and toppling it to the ground. There is something sad about the wild thing Newt can see in his eyes, and something lovely about the way the ruffled feathers smooth upon seeing him. He nods, smiles, reassures Graves and waves away his apologies. He departs to replace the drink, and when he returns the flag is smooth and unwrinkled once more.

* * *

 

 

The sixth time comes later – he goes back to glimpses, quick shadows of a man who always rounds corners just as he spots him, who appears for meetings before vanishing like the spectre he has somewhat become. Newt vaguely wonders if he is being avoided – Queenie denies it without even being asked. (Sometimes, just sometimes, he wonders whether she simply believes so, or if she can hear what Graves thinks about him, too. He’d ask her if he thought she’d tell.)

Newt waits. Admittedly the avoidances do sting, but he knows from experience – if you approach a wild creature it will not love you. It will bite and claw and sting until it is certain you are no longer in a state to hurt it further. You must wait, and if it comes to you then it may learn to love you yet. Loving the creature first is not enough.

Eventually the waiting pays off, and as he leaves a briefing he feels he is being watched; when he slowly turns around, there stands Graves, already looking like he regrets the decision. Apologies are made, and again, shaken off. Slowly, Newt realises that maybe Graves is apologising for more than spilled coffee. He is apologising for things that are beyond his control, things that made him suffer as much as everybody else. Newt says this, too, and something in Graves’ eyes tells him that that is the first time he has heard such a thing and believed it. Slowly, a scarred hand squeezes a slumped shoulder, and Newt ignores the flinch he is given in favour of leaving the warm weight on Graves’ arm for a few moments more

It is no longer matter of how much comfort Newt will give, because he will give it all if he can. It’s a matter of how much Graves will _take_. How much he believes himself to be deserving of.

* * *

 

The seventh time is lost somewhere along the way, as are the eighth, the ninth. They are all of them blurs of coffee and warmth and flinches, trembles that gradually slow and eventually peter out as the two lonely wild things love each other. One is just learning to – the other did so all along.

* * *

The tenth time is when Graves becomes Percival, when _it_ becomes _he_. When the wild thing sleeps in his office, when a blanket is draped over his shoulders, when soft hands and soft words caress his hair and ears, and he is finally trusting enough to let them do so. When a kiss is placed to his forehead, and he sighs in contentment before reaching up and catching one pair of lips with his own, just gently, just briefly.

Every time after that? They are all very much the same.


End file.
